Gos, Sudan, Sudan
The young woman victim was visiting her younger sister's home near Warawar when she was captured. It during the dry season. The soldiers came early in the morning. Everyone was asleep. Her sister and her woke up with the sound of gunfire. They ran out of her tukul hut as fast as they could. But they did not get very far. They were surrounded. There were a lot of Arab soldiers all around them. Some wore uniforms, others wore jellabeyas. They had come at night on camels and horses. Six soldiers grabbed the victim. She struggled with them and tried to get away. But they beat her with a big stick. She had to submit. Scars on her back are still visible from the wound she received during the beating. They tied her hands together with a rope and led her away to the bush. They raped her in the bush, one after the other, all six of them. After that, she had to walk beyond the River Kiir with the other slaves. Her hands were tied to a long rope. Her sister was tied to it too. Along the way they were beaten and raped. They walked for four days. Then they reached a place where the soldiers divided them and the cows and goats amongst themselves. She was given to a slavmaster, and her sister was given to another. The victim's slavemaster was a good friend of the leader of the raiders. He had a body guard and was responsible for distributing slaves and cattle amongst the PDF. This meant that he was away from home a lot. He took the victim to his home in Gos, Sudan, where she had to do housework for his wife, an Arab woman who frequently hit the victim with a big stick, even when she was ill, and made her sleep outside in the courtyard, where there was no shelter over her head. Only when it rained did she let the victim sleep in the covered cattle pen. Sometimes the slavemaster would come to the victim at night, and take me to the cattle pen for sex. Whenever the wife discovered that her husband was missing at night, she would give the victim a good beating on the next day because her husband had come to her. The victim gave birth to the slavemaster's baby, who was seven months old at the time of her liberation. The slave master called him Ahmed, a very common Arab name, but the mother called him another name. The worst part about being with the slavemaster and his wife were their threats to kill the victim. Whenever they told her to get water from a far place, or do some other hard labor, they would say that they would cut her throat if I didn't obey. The master would threaten her like this when he wanted to have sex with her. The victim's sister's throat was cut by her master. The master's children told the victim they saw her sister's body when they were going to the well. They said she had tried to escape, but was caught. The victim was so afraid, she thought she had to get away from there. She knew that the master loved his child by her and would never let him go, so she wanted to escape with him. One day, she was told by a woman who was cultivating in the fields that a trader was looking for slaves to return to their homes. She decided to escape and ran with the child to the forest. There she came across a Dinka man who took care of her and helped her get home again. She likes hearing her own name again. She also like it because no one calls her 'abid' (slave) or 'jongei' (nigger) anymore.